The Mycological Society of America |
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2022 MSA Meeting: Save the Date! |
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Save the Date! The 2022 MSA Annual Meeting is scheduled for July 10-14, 2022, in Gainesville, Florida! Registration and abstracts are expected to open soon! Keep an eye on your email and the MSA website for additional important information.
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Dear Mycologists,
Warmest greetings from Tucson and the University of Arizona, where the Robert L. Gilbertson Mycological Herbarium and my lab are on the traditional homelands of the O’odham and Yaqui peoples. I’m so happy to wish everyone a good start to the new year, with optimism and hope for better times ahead.
It goes without saying that the past year has been yet another “year like no other”. Our thoughts are with all, including those who have lost a loved one and those for whom the pandemic has created not only the considerable challenges we all are experiencing, but also undue burdens. I encourage our membership to remember those for whom we each can provide support – students and postdocs, colleagues, community members, and friends in mycology and beyond. It’s a great time to reach out with kindness and empathy.
For now: much like spring mushrooms spark joy and speak to good times ahead, I’m happy to share some good news from across our wonderful Society.
First, we continue to work with enthusiasm and cautious optimism toward our goal to meet in person in Gainesville for our 2022 MSA Annual Meeting. Our teams are working hard to develop a safe and inclusive conference that will welcome those who desire to be present in person and those unable to travel for any reason. Warm thanks go to Matt Smith and Frances Trail, our Program Committee, our partners in The Rees Group and at the University of Florida, our Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee, our Student and Postdoc Section, and our MSA leadership for working toward a fabulous MSA Annual Meeting in Gainesville, July 10-14. Please stay tuned for the call for abstracts and registration, information about our auction, news of our exciting symposia, and more. In the meantime, we remain attentive to health data and the best safety and inclusion practices for the well-being of our Society and our communities.
Second, our MSA spirit of volunteerism, collegiality, and mutual support continues to make our mycological community more impactful, diverse, and welcoming every day. Here are just a few of the activities in motion across our Society:
- Our MSA Diversity Award Fund continues to attract support from our members, now surpassing the traditional $10,000 threshold for activation of the award. We thank the members of our Society who created this award fund and have worked steadily toward its growth. With leadership from current Chair, Anna Bazzicalupo; past Chair Brian Lovett; and members past and present, our Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee is now working with MSA’s Executive Council to formalize the award’s scope and application process ahead of the 2022-2023 award season.
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Our flagship journal, Mycologia, continues to flourish thanks to stewardship from Managing Editor, Chris Schardl, and our Advisory Board, led by Steve Harris. As of February 1, we welcome two new Executive Editors (Anthony Amend and Terry Henkel) and our new Review Editor (Brandon Matheny). We look forward to your submissions to our Society’s outlet for excellent work in all aspects of mycology.
- We continue to work toward improvements on our MSA website. Please stay tuned in late spring as we improve our website’s accessibility, attention to diversity and inclusion, and pathways to donate. We thank Danny Haelewaters and our Electronic Communication and Web Committee, and our partners in The Rees Group for these forthcoming and important changes to our web presence.
- We are thrilled and grateful to have activated the new MSA Climate Change Research Award as part of the remarkable awards portfolio offered by MSA. This award reflects the generosity of an anonymous donor and showcases one of the many ways MSA can support impactful research. We thank the donor and acknowledge the leadership of Greg Mueller and Allison Walker for setting up the new award in time for this awards cycle. Thanks too to our Research Awards Committee for adding this to their annual workload.
- We thank everyone who has taken the time to submit a nomination for MSA’s elections and we look forward to our spring ballot. We also have numerous initiatives in action for which Society-wide emails are forthcoming: surveys to understand existing and aspirational demography of MSA, perspectives on open access structure in publishing, how to continue to improve our impact and web presence, and how best to implement an inclusive and equitable membership fee structure.
These activities and more remind me of the qualities that make our Society shine. As always, we welcome your engagement – and if you have questions or ideas, we welcome your input.
Thank you to all who give time and effort to MSA and to growing the place and impact of mycology in so many ways.
Yours in Service,
Betsy Arnold (she/her/hers)
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Executive Vice President's Report |
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Happy new year to all of my MSA colleagues and wishing you the best for 2022!
Council Business: The Executive Council met on December 3, 2021, for a fall quarterly meeting and will meet on March 5, 2022, for the midyear meeting. Nearly all midyear reports have already been received. Since my October column, two email polls were approved by Council. Poll 2021-10, A motion to approve Emeritus Member status for Dr. Glen Stanosz, and Poll 2021-11, A motion to approve the nomination of Dr. Terry Henkel for Executive Editor at Mycologia.
Member Deaths: Donald Thomas Wicklow (November 21, 2021) and Alexander “Sasha” Kovalenko (December 10, 2021) and Christian Lechat (January 7, 2022).
2022 Membership Renewal: If you have not done so already, it is time to renew your membership with MSA. Links for new and existing members can be found here: https://msafungi.org/msa-membership-definitions/. Committed MSA members are encouraged to select the auto-renew or multiyear membership option to reduce unintended lapses in membership. These options also ensure a $10 early renewal discount on next year’s membership!
New Members: I would like to extend a warm welcome to the following new members who joined MSA since my October column. Their memberships will be formally approved at the 2022 Annual Business Meeting in Gainesville, FL.
Australia: Giovanni Nunes, Peter Donecker
Canada: Emily Trudeau
France: Jonathan Cazabonne
India: Joshua Anil Rao
Japan: Takahito Kobayashi, Takeshi, Oku
United States: Robert Proctor, William Beeson, Art Goodtimes, Erik Cooke, Anil Mathew, Jorge Aguinaldo, Ginger Gibbs, Siddiq Ali, Jonathan Van Hoose, Mitchell Roth, Jeffrey Laprade, Neil Dollinger, Barry Hawkins, Imane Laraba, Rebecca Evans, Charlie Havens, Morgan Gaglianese-Woody, Matt McCary, Anthony Amend, Jereme George, Thomas Luehl, Jonathan Horton, Steven Harris, Thelmalyn Montenegro, Aaron David, Alexander Smith, Erinn Dady, Hung Kim Doan, Theresa Halula, Arik Joukhajian, Julia Kun, Bradley Schlottman, Ashley Morris.
Help us add names to the New Members list by recommending MSA to amateur and professional colleagues interested in fungi, especially students and postdoctoral associates. Members of our Society include pathologists, geneticists, systematists, ecologists, and those who want to know more about the fascinating world of fungi. Joining MSA is easy (https://msafungi.org/join-us/). Please contact me (egcantonwine@valdosta.edu) or our MSA Membership Coordinator, Cori VanGalder, (msafungi@reesgroupinc.com), if you have questions about membership.
REMINDER - MSA Directory Update: Now is a good time to make sure your profile information in the MSA Directory (address, phone, and email) is current, so MSA can continue to bring you timely information about awards, elections, meetings, and news. To review your information, visit (https://msafungi.org/membership/) or select the "Member Login" link found within the membership menu option at msafungi.org. If you need assistance, contact our MSA Membership Coordinator, Cori VanGalder (msafungi@reesgroupinc.com).
Please feel free to contact me if you are interested in getting more involved with the Society or have any questions about the Society or MSA business.
Respectfully submitted,
Emily Cantonwine (egcantonwine@valdosta.edu)
MSA Executive Vice President
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Alexander (Sasha) Kovalenko
Alexander Kovalenko (Sasha) was born on 13.09.1953 in Novocherkassk, Rostov Oblast, in a family of biologists. In 1975 Sasha graduated with honors from the Faculty of Biology of Kuban State University. Then he continued his postgraduate studies at the Komarov Botanical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg. He successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis "Fungi of the order Agaricales s. l. in the mountain forests of the central part of the Northwest Caucasus" in 1981. Subsequently, all his scientific activity was connected with this institute.
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Christian Lechat
It is with great sadness that we announce the death of Christian Lechat on 7 January 2022 at the age of 69. Christian was an amateur mycologist from France who developed expertise in the hypocrealean fungi, finding many new species, but who also moved forward the field of mycology by fostering interest and interactions especially in microascomycetes.
Despite a lack of academic background, and perhaps because of it, Christian developed many varied skills throughout his life, before becoming the mycologist we came to know and admire. Thanks to his considerable manual skills and artistic sense, he first made and marketed strikingly realistic scale models of mushrooms for use in pharmacies and the Museum of Natural History in Paris.
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Martha Sherwood
Dr. Martha Allen Sherwood passed away in Eugene, Oregon, on 19 October 2020 after suffering a stroke. Although she moved on from studying fungi in the mid 1990s, her contributions in microascomycete systematics and fossil fungi still serve as important references. Her holiday letters and cartoons revealed her quirky personality, artistic talent, and broad interests that kept her busy throughout her life.
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Donald Wicklow
Don Wicklow was a long time MSA member and benefactor. He is well known as Editor with George Carroll of two editions (1981 and 1992) of The Fungal Community: Its Organization and Role in the Ecosystem, as well as for his many publications on fungal ecology, especially mycotoxins and other fungal metabolites. Don held eleven patents on new fungal natural products.
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Never Too Late
Because some mycologists also may have been overlooked, any MSA member is invited to submit a memorial for an overlooked mycologist for publication in Inoculum. Please submit memorials to MSA Memorials, Editor, Meredith Blackwell mblackwell@lsu.edu. The series “Never Too Late,” begins with the first in a series of memorials, this one about Thelma Perry, a mycologist with a remarkable story.
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Thelma Perry
Thelma Perry studied fungi and her story is a monument to determination. An African American, she was born (April 30, 1941) and reared in Birmingham, Alabama. In addition to Thelma and her parents, James H. and Inez Perry, her family included four brothers and three sisters. After she graduated from Holy Family High School (currently known as Holy Family Cristo Rey Catholic High School), she attended Xavier University, probably in New Orleans, although a record is not available, perhaps because she did not complete a degree. When Thelma was 37 years old, she returned to school and completed a Bachelor's degree in biology at Louisiana College (1978), a private Baptist college in Pineville.
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MSA Inoculum Educator Spotlight February 2022
Interviewed by: Sara Gremillion of the MSA Education Committee
Subject: Marie Trest
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Amanitas of North America
Authors: Britt Bunyard and Jay Justice
Submitted by: Cristina Rodriguez-Caycedo
I was fortunate to be the first person to purchase the book Amanitas of North America, which I had planned to enjoy reading and add to my collection of mycology texts in my home library. I expected a book with wonderful images and taxonomic content and nothing more. Perhaps there was more advertised, but I had not made any assumptions about its content. Having worked for many wonderful years on the Amanitaceae, under the mentorship of Dr. Rodham E. Tulloss, I was excited to see what kind of book this was. I was fully aware of the great undertaking this must have been in order to present the reader with the most notable Amanita species of North America. Knowing the dedication of the authors to the genus Amanita, I had high hopes for this book.
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Newly Published and Upcoming Books to Watch For
Submitted by: Amy Rossman
Click on the button below to see a list of newly published or soon to be published books.
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First Report of the Blast Single-celled Spore Pathogen, Pyricularia oryzae, on Rice in the India
Submitted by: Boyapati Ravi Teja Naidu and Manoj Kumar Barnwal
Rice (Oryza sativa L.) is one of the most important cereal crops of the world and a prime staple food for half of the world's human population (Singh and Singh, 2019). Among biological factors, diseases are of prime importance. Major diseases like a blast, brown spot, false smut, sheath blight, bacterial blight, sheath rot, etc. cause significant damage to the rice crop all over the world (Sahu et al., 2018). Among diseases, rice blast, caused by Pyricularia grisea (Cooke) Sacc. (Perfect stage - Magnaporthe oryzae) is one of the most important fungal diseases causing significant yield losses in rice (Panda et al., 2017). Rice Blast disease has been observed in almost all rice production regions in the world (Ou, 1985).
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Searching for Pezizales Diversity in Appalachia
Submitted by: Ben Lemmond, Jud VanWyk, Gregory Bonito, Rosanne Healy, Matthew Smith
In August and September of 2021, mycologists from the eastern and midwestern U.S. converged in the southern Appalachian Mountains for two separate weeklong research forays. The focus of these trips was to collect Pezizales, a morphologically and ecologically diverse order of Ascomycota that includes taxa that make distinctive cup-shaped, saddle-like, or truffle-like fruiting bodies. The collecting trips were supported by a National Science Foundation grant (DEB-1946445) and are part of a broader research effort to generate resolved genome-scale phylogenies of Pezizales, characterize the trophic ecology for species whose primary trophic mode is unknown or debated, and examine the microbiome of fungal fruiting bodies. These expeditions provided invaluable field training and mycology experiences across generations of mycologists.
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North American Mycology Goes to War: World War II
Submitted by: Ron Petersen
As some of you know already, I have been interested in this subject for some time. Envisioned are two major stories: mycologists (or future mycologists) who served in the armed forces somewhere in the world; and the many programs on the home front supporting the war effort.
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Musings and Mycologists – A New Student & Postdoc Series
The MSA Student and Postdoc Section is organizing a new series of interactive coffee hour meetings, “Musings & Mycologists”, around the journeys, adventures, and experiences of mycologists. If you would like to share any challenges or inspirations you’ve experienced on your path to being a mycologist or have any wisdom you’d like to share with others, the student and postdoc section would love to hear from you. Please complete this form, or click on the button below to nominate yourself or someone else!
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Fungal Diversity Survey Updates
Submitted by: Else Vellinga and Gabriela D’Elia
Fungal Diversity Survey (aka FunDiS) started 2022 with a new leadership team: Ken Buegeleisen is the new President of the Board, taking over this role from Bill Sheehan, and Gabriela D’Elia is Director. Both are well connected to their local mycological clubs. Ken is Treasurer for the Sonoma County Mycological Association in California as well as Treasurer for FunDiS. Gabriela is Vice President of the Mushroom Society of Utah.
FunDiS is the successor of the North American Mycoflora Project initiated by Stephen Russell and Bill Sheehan after a successful, inspirational workshop at the 2017 MSA meeting in Athens, Georgia.
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Mycological Collection of Herbarium UB
A report on over 25 years of activity of the Mycological Collection of Herbarium UB (Universidade de Brasília) was published, and is freely available at the site of the Brazilian Phytopathological Society
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Make Your Canadian Slime Mold Records Part of a Report for the Wild Species Series by Canada's National General Status Working Group!
The Canadian government is committed to assess the status of slime mold species under the National Framework for Species at Risk Conservation, the Accord for the Protection of Species at Risk, and the Species at Risk Act (SARA). If you have records of slime molds from Canada, please send information including scientific name, date collected, and approximate location to: myxocanada@gmail.com by March 15, 2022.
New and older lists or records are equally welcomed!
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DEI Survey
The MSA Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion (DEI) Committee will soon be conducting a membership survey. The purpose of the survey is to better understand how to serve membership. MSA is one of the few Societies that will have temporal data on the composition of its membership and the information collected in the survey will assist in understanding trends in membership composition and predict what the Society will need to address in the coming years. In time, continued surveys will also help assess initiatives. Please contact Anna Bazziacalupo, Committee Chair, at bazzicalupo@zoology.ubc.ca if you have any questions. Please watch for the survey!
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AgroBiotechnology for Better Future, Fungi and Plants
Members of Biotechnology Students Science Club at the Faculty of Chemistry, Wroclaw University of Science and Technology in Poland are organizing a Scientific Conference, "AgroBiotechnology for Better Future–Fungi and Plants" The conference will be held on March 12, 2022, via Zoom. Conference themes are related to the biotechnology, agroculture, botany, environmental science, and usage of microorganism, especially fungi, in these and related fields.
The Biotechnology Students Science Club would like to invite MSA members to attend. There will be a poster session that is open to all to attend, and the conference will feature a total of five lectures. Coffee and lunch breaks will be provided.
This event is designed to share the research project experience of students from around the world. Participants will have the opportunity to listen to speeches of scientific authorities in the field of environmental biotechnology, mycology, agroculture and botany. Participation in the conference will be completely free of charge.
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Mid-Atlantic States Mycology Conference
April 22-24, 2022
The annual Mid-Atlantic States Mycology Conference is scheduled for April 22-24, 2022! It will be a hybrid meeting, held in person in Clemson, South Carolina with people able to attend online as well. The meeting will be on the Clemson University campus and accommodations and festivities will be held nearby at the Outdoor Lab. Look for more details closer to the meeting, including announcements regarding if the meeting will be hybrid or online only. Contact Julia Kerrigan jkerrig@clemson.edu for more information.
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Remember to enable emails from msafungi@reesgroupinc.com for continued MSA updates.
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It's time to renew your membership for 2022! Access your MSA membership profile here!
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Digital issues of Mycologia are now accessed on the MSA website, not at Taylor and Francis. You will need your log in information. See web page for troubleshooting steps.
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Thank you to all who have donated to MSA funds since our last publication of Inoculum!
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MSA continues to be immensely appreciative of all of the generous donors that allow the Society to continue to fund research and travel through various endowment funds. If you're interested in supporting any of these funds, there are multiple ways you can donate!
- Use MSA's secure donation portal (you will be redirected to Wild Apricot, the payment processing platform for MSA)
- Donate while renewing your membership for 2022
- Call the MSA Membership Coordinator with your donation information at (608) 441-1060 ext. 162
- Mail a check, paid to the order of The Mycological Society of America to:
The Mycological Society of America
2424 American Lane
Madison, WI 53704
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We Want to See Your Fungal Photos! |
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Your fungal photo could be featured as the header for the next issue of Inoculum!
MSA is calling for your photos! Chosen photos will appear in future issues of Inoculum. Submit your photos along with your name and any text you'd like to accompany the image (optional) using the button below!
The February 2022 Inoculum header photo was submitted by: Stephanie McFarlane.
Thank you for submitting your photo, Stephanie!
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The Mycological Society of America | (608) 441-1060 | 2424 American Ln. Madison, WI, 53704 | MSAfungi.org
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